Thursday, February 22, 2018

According to Rich Eisen, one MLB exec recently told him that there is a rule being discussed by some in the game that would basically cause a riot. It goes like this: In the 9th inning only, the manager of the trailing team would be allowed to send up any three players he wants for the first three at-bats of the inning. It doesn’t matter where a team is in the batting order during the game. The skipper can send up anyone he wants in any order for the first three at-bats in the 9th.

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The traditional baseball fan in me says don't touch the game. The inner 8 year-old kid in me sez I cannot wait until Aroldis Chapman has to face down Betts, Benintendi and Ramirez in the bottom of the ninth inning to secure a one-run lead in Fenway.

Home-field advantage would go way up unless you also let a visiting team that was ahead try the same thing in the top of the ninth. Actually it would be even more exciting if you could do it in the 8th and the 7th, and eventually the 4th-through-6th, and I think that the concept of "batting order" will eventually become obsolete and anyone could bat in any inning.

This would lead to huge advantages for the offense, so the defense could compensate via the introduction of movable bases. Let's say the throw is coming in to second and the 2B is covering. If it looks like the runner will be safe, the shortstop is allowed to pick up second base and run towards third with it. The runner would have to chase him while also avoiding the tag.

Now the advantage is back to the defense, so the hitter in future would not be limited to the batter's "box" but would be able to chase the pitcher around the field trying to bat the ball out of his hands.

One of the arguments I heard in favor of it was that Lebron James and Tom Brady get on the field when the game is on the line, but with baseball it's random. Well that may be true for Lebron, provided he hasn't been hurt or fouled out, but if the other team's offense runs out the clock, Tom doesn't get back on the field. So that's a problem. I think for the last two minutes of the game, both offenses and defenses should be on the field and march in opposite directions, so all the important and talented players can have a role in affecting the game.

(AP) In what has been described as the most thrilling game 17 in Wildcard preliminaries history, the California Angels of Los Angeles in Anaheim pulled out a 31-27 win over the New York Yankees to advance to the wildcard quarterfinals and sending the Yankees to the Wildcard elimination tournament. Mike Trout Jr mashed seven homeruns, driving in nine, including all three 9th inning game winners - despite being chosen to wear the Sumo suit when batting by the Yankees, as required by the new 2032 rules.

Angels manager Albert Pujols, who took heat for letting ace RHP Larry "Iron Man" Wilson pitch into the 3rd inning of game 13, managed the clincher in a more traditional manner. Wilson picked up the win by pitching 1 1/3 innings to start, before giving way to the 19 relievers - 11 of whom make up the Angels vaunted shutdown bullpen.

In postgame comments, Yankees skipper defend his controversial move to use his final Deploy the Feral Cats to the Basepaths in the 8th inning rather than saving it for the 9th. "The rules require us to pick the Sumo suit wearer before the game starts and I just figured with Trout Jr due up three times in the 9th inning, the 8th was the best time to deploy the Feral Cats. Unfortunately, it just didn't work out for us."

The game also wasn't without controversy - after Yankee teen phenom Derek Jeter III, chosen to wear the Sumo suit by the Angels, appeared to break contact with the exploding spiderman 2nd base after a boring double, the Angels used their replay challenge and the actor tasked with playing Jeter III, under the new Stage Play Replay by Hulu replay rules appeared to fumble his lines. LF drama critic Angel Hernandez II threw the red tomato, calling him out for the terrible performance. "It's disappointing. I tried to keep my words short and to the point, like always, but how the actor interprets the role is beyond my control," said a teary Jeter.

The game took 9 hours, 17 minutes - the second shortest of the postseason.

It's good, but a nitpick: Trout does not yet have any children, if his wife (they just got married this offseason) delivers a male heir within the year, he'll only be 14 by 2032. But Trout himself will be only 41, and given that it is the greatest players who show the most longevity, he'll be able to wear the sumo suit himself as he tries for one last championship.

It's good, but a nitpick: Trout does not yet have any children, if his wife (they just got married this offseason) delivers a male heir within the year, he'll only be 14 by 2032. But Trout himself will be only 41, and given that it is the greatest players who show the most longevity, he'll be able to wear the sumo suit himself as he tries for one last championship.

I could come up with a dumber idea. The manager can send anyone in the active lineup not on the bases up to the plate. Mike Trout leads off and hits a home run? Send him up again. It would be almost like basketball, in that you give your best offensive players the most offensive opportunities.

I wonder what Babe Ruth’s single season home run record would have been under those rules? 200? 300?

The rules require us to pick the Sumo suit wearer before the game starts and I just figured with Trout Jr due up three times in the 9th inning, the 8th was the best time to deploy the Feral Cats. Unfortunately, it just didn't work out for us

What an idiot. MGL has conclusively shown that Feral Cats deployment is 3.4% more effective when stacked with Sumo requirements.

It's good, but a nitpick: Trout does not yet have any children, if his wife (they just got married this offseason) delivers a male heir within the year, he'll only be 14 by 2032. But Trout himself will be only 41, and given that it is the greatest players who show the most longevity, he'll be able to wear the sumo suit himself as he tries for one last championship.

I guess I just figured it would be assumed that the next era of PEDs would be age-reversing drugs... and Trout himself would become Trout Jr as a result.

How about a rule that there isn't a batting order, just a list of the 9 players in the game at any given time. The players can bat in any order the manager wants, but no one can bat again until all of the other players in the game (or pinch hitters for them) have batted once this cycle.

I don't think that this is a good idea at all, but it would at least require strategic thinking and attempts at foresight. It might be a fun mod for OOTP or something.

This seems like the appropriate topic to throw out my own idea for a major change in baseball. Mind you, I'm not saying it's a good idea, just an idea.

The season plays out entirely as it does now until the end of the regular season. Then every team is allowed to redistribute the runs they scored over the course of the entire season in any way they wish. If you had a 10-1 victory at some point, maybe you bank 8 of those runs and use them to help you over the hump in a few 1-run losses you had. But maybe you use them to bolster a few 1-run victories of your own, thinking that the other team will be attempting to use some of their own redistributed runs to try and turn their own prior losses into wins. Every team gets 24 hours to decide where they now use their runs and then turn in to MLB their new game totals. MLB then recalculates who wins each game based on what both teams submitted for that game. In case the redistributed runs result in a tie, the winner on the day of the original game retains the win.

I know it's nuts, but some years ago this concept occurred to me (really it can be used in any sport). Just imagine the tension on the day after the season as the baseball world breathlessly awaits the new results of the entire season, and actuaries are the new stars of the game!

What if, instead of nine players hitting, throwing, and catching a baseball, we have eleven players kicking and heading a larger ball toward some kind of a goal. We can call it "European baseball." The Blue Jays will have to alter the game by playing it on ice with fewer players. They can call it "Tim Hortons."

A good rule is to ignore all ideas that people are unwilling to support on the record. Having said that, while I absolutely hate this idea and find it completely unacceptable, I do find it marginally less reprehensible than the one about starting innings with people on second base.

If Manfred is afraid to even mandate a pitch clock, does anyone think he is going to really change the fundamentals of the game?

That happens I retire from baseball fandom. I'll be done. Dumbest thing ever heard. Fortunately it was probably an idea floated in a brain storming session that wont ever be seriously considered

Might as well just go to a 5 man batting order and have the worst hitters in the current 9 man lineup be defensive only players. Then you can shorten games to 6 innings so they get the same number of AB over 162 games. Games shortened. More excitement. Hmmmm

(AP) In what has been described as the most thrilling game 17 in Wildcard preliminaries history, the California Angels of Los Angeles in Anaheim pulled out a 31-27 win over the New York Yankees to advance to the wildcard quarterfinals and sending the Yankees to the Wildcard elimination tournament. Mike Trout Jr mashed seven homeruns, driving in nine, including all three 9th inning game winners - despite being chosen to wear the Sumo suit when batting by the Yankees, as required by the new 2032 rules.

Angels manager Albert Pujols, who took heat for letting ace RHP Larry "Iron Man" Wilson pitch into the 3rd inning of game 13, managed the clincher in a more traditional manner. Wilson picked up the win by pitching 1 1/3 innings to start, before giving way to the 19 relievers - 11 of whom make up the Angels vaunted shutdown bullpen.

In postgame comments, Yankees skipper defend his controversial move to use his final Deploy the Feral Cats to the Basepaths in the 8th inning rather than saving it for the 9th. "The rules require us to pick the Sumo suit wearer before the game starts and I just figured with Trout Jr due up three times in the 9th inning, the 8th was the best time to deploy the Feral Cats. Unfortunately, it just didn't work out for us."

The game also wasn't without controversy - after Yankee teen phenom Derek Jeter III, chosen to wear the Sumo suit by the Angels, appeared to break contact with the exploding spiderman 2nd base after a boring double, the Angels used their replay challenge and the actor tasked with playing Jeter III, under the new Stage Play Replay by Hulu replay rules appeared to fumble his lines. LF drama critic Angel Hernandez II threw the red tomato, calling him out for the terrible performance. "It's disappointing. I tried to keep my words short and to the point, like always, but how the actor interprets the role is beyond my control," said a teary Jeter.

The game took 9 hours, 17 minutes - the second shortest of the postseason.

If Manfred is afraid to even mandate a pitch clock, does anyone think he is going to really change the fundamentals of the game?

Yes. He needs something significantly more crisp and device-friendly. That's why all these ideas are getting trial ballooned.

The market for something this slow-paced with so little on-field action that generates so few highlights is shrinking exponentially. The easiest device-friendly highlight is the homerun (*) ... which is why he juiced the ball a year and a half ago or whatever it was.

How about a rule that there isn't a batting order, just a list of the 9 players in the game at any given time. The players can bat in any order the manager wants, but no one can bat again until all of the other players in the game (or pinch hitters for them) have batted once this cycle

That resembles the batting-order rule in cricket. All eleven must bat in an innings, but the order can be changed from the initial plan and changed from innings to innings.

There are elements of cricket that are more amenable to this scheme – including stopping play overnight, in which case teams may use a "night watchman" late in the day, whose instructions are just to stay alive till better batsmen can take over the following morning.

There are elements of cricket that are more amenable to this scheme – including stopping play overnight, in which case teams may use a "night watchman" late in the day, whose instructions are just to stay alive till better batsmen can take over the following morning.

I'm even less inclined to ever try to understand cricket after this sentence...

What is the most radical rule change you can devise that isn't completely stupid?

Don't know how radical these are, but I'd put the odds at better than 50-50 that four balls, three strikes will be reduced to three balls, two strikes within the next 25 years. I'd have no issue with it if they put it in place for 2018.

I'd also shrink all base distances other than home to first by a foot or two.

Baseball will converge toward Home Run Derby over the next 30-40 years, a bit at a time. I could see scoring take into account home run distance, for example. Homers are far and away the game's best selling point and content provider for the device generation and the game is going to be even more built around them over time.

Baseball will converge toward Home Run Derby over the next 30-40 years, a bit at a time. I could see scoring take into account home run distance, for example. Homers are far and away the game's best selling point and content provider for the device generation and the game is going to be even more built around them over time.

Then every team is allowed to redistribute the extra distance over the wall of their home runs to other fly balls over the course of the entire season in any way they wish.

What happens when the ghost fielder tags the ghost runner at 2B, and the ghost runners foot may have come off the bag? Call in the paranormalists?

Easy- the ghost umpires make the call, with there being a good chance that the ghost fans will get angry, throw ghost soda bottles at the ghost umpires, and cause a ghost riot that causes the game to be forfeited.

Don't know how radical these are, but I'd put the odds at better than 50-50 that four balls, three strikes will be reduced to three balls, two strikes within the next 25 years. I'd have no issue with it if they put it in place for 2018.

3 balls and 2 strikes might make there be fewer strikeouts, because it would strongly encourage swinging early in the count.

Yep. There would be far fewer intentionally taken strikes, which both slow pace and are silly. Other advantages:

1. Even a walk or strikeout would happen more quickly.
2. Easier workload generally on pitchers.
3. Proportionally more pitches and innings thrown by pitchers people know instead of Anonymous Middle Reliever.

I unequivocally support measures to see the best baseball players playing more.

Name a sport where anybody plays more (and has more impact) than the pitcher. Everything in baseball revolves around the pitch and, to a great extent, the outcome of every play is affected by the quality of the pitch. Possibly point guard in basketball since they play both ways.

And c'mon, how many touches does a striker actually get in the course of a soccer game? How many quality touches? At least 95% of the time in soccer, the probability of a serious attempt at goal is zero. And seems like most of those are on set plays where the threat lasts about a second.

But sure, without question baseball is the brooding but beautiful French actress who doesn't say a lot and apparently more folks prefer strippers. That doesn't mean the entire world has to be limited to strippers and half-pipers.

It’s not really baseball to me unless there is one guy in the lineup swinging like Jon Lester, and one guy on the field who resembles Adam Dunn in that you just hope the ball is not hit to him with runners on base.

Walt — I agree that pitchers have a large impact — when they play. Imagine Westbrook or Lebron sitting out four games in a row. Or sitting out the entire second half of a game. Or playing every third game in the final minutes.

Worth mentioning — my wacko XLB is fundamentally the same game as it is today, on any given play. It tweaks participation rules. It’s about maximizing the talent on the field at any given time. In a way this is the idea of the DH taken to the extreme.

Whitey Herzog is a Hall of Fame manager. He thought it'd be amazing to play every World Series in a neutral-site domed stadium. I never thought I'd live to see a dumber idea than that, but a new contender has just sprinted into the lead.

In what other sport are the best players unable to participate in a large percentage of plays?

1) none of the other sports are either as good or as rooted in their statistical history as baseball.

2) in the NBA, many an overtime game has been decided by lesser players because - when the refs call the game legitimately - the stars foul out and the subs determine the outcome. (You could argue that the NBA should alter their rules so that the 7th foul should result in free throws and the ball, but that's an argument for the NBA website, and one I'd subscribe to b/c unlike baseball, hoops stats are not really memorable and other than freak events are really based on per game numbers, and it is purely a star league in terms of effect on the game's outcome. Baseball is far more balanced in who impacts a particular game.)

3) the NHL, which although I don't follow and sadly can not name 5 active players at the moment, and I genuinely think has the most exciting playoffs of any sport, has it's stars on the ice for (a guess only) 35% of the game?

4) Baseball has been glorious since Babe Ruth, has had its ebbs and flows with what's in vogue during a particular generation without major alterations to the game's rules other than adding the despicable DH or altering height of the mound. The sport has rarely ever had such an influx of young talent and the pipeline is full of extraordinary future stars. If the young generation doesn't get it, then they can just go pound salt. The game will be supported by those of us who get it, by those of the current ADD generation who will come to their senses, and, more likely though sadly for those of us who truly view it as an American game, by the international audience who will continually supply more and more talent and viewership. Kind of like the way many Americans have taken to European soccer now.

5) F**k Colin Cowherd. Does anyone love the sound of their own voice more than he does?

4) Baseball has been glorious since Babe Ruth, has had its ebbs and flows with what's in vogue during a particular generation without major alterations to the game's rules other than adding the despicable DH or altering height of the mound. The sport has rarely ever had such an influx of young talent and the pipeline is full of extraordinary future stars. If the young generation doesn't get it, then they can just go pound salt. The game will be supported by those of us who get it, by those of the current ADD generation who will come to their senses, and, more likely though sadly for those of us who truly view it as an American game, by the international audience who will continually supply more and more talent and viewership. Kind of like the way many Americans have taken to European soccer now.

Terence Mann: Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.